


unravel

by ghoulgy



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Magical Realism, Non-Linear Narrative, Strangers to Lovers, Superpowers, this is certainly something i wrote, vague descriptions of injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-10 09:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14734323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulgy/pseuds/ghoulgy
Summary: There are nights Jihoon doesn’t sleep, just traces letters and numbers into Joshua’s back, tries to puzzle out what it all means. What it means for the three of them to live under one roof. What it means to be aware of the day someone you love dies.Sometimes, Soonyoung tries to tell them he’s been out bowling, even when he’s covered in blood.Joshua feels everything all at once and Soonyoung does not understand the merits of honesty.





	unravel

**Author's Note:**

> welp...... cant tell if this is the first jisoo/jihoon/soonyoung fic or not but u kno what it really might be. thanks @ god for cursing me with only being able to enjoy supremely niche ot3s
> 
> uh the way this is written is kinda weird so i tried to demarcate each part by labeling them w roman numerals!  
> iii. present  
> ii. past  
> i. distant past
> 
> anyway this took me way too long considering how short it is. i hope its enjoyable

[ _The wind knocks the heads of the flowers together._

_Steam rises from every cup at every table at once._

_Things happen all the time, things happen every minute_

_that have nothing to do with us._ ]

[ _A Primer for the Small Weird Loves_ |Richard Siken]

 

iii.

 

 

Half a world away, things start happening and they don’t stop.

Soonyoung’s in Kentucky, but then, it doesn’t matter where he is exactly, in the end because everything happens anyway.

He’s standing in a 7/11 with one too few bathrooms and one too many employees. He’d thought, maybe, stopping by here would help him prove something to himself, that yes, it did matter where he went, that not everything was fated in the way that Jihoon always made it out to be.

It proves nothing. Because Jihoon isn’t there to laugh at him, to point out a dot on a google map and whisper _look, right where I said you’d be._

There was the time Jihoon had drawn a map of where Soonyoung was meant to be during the day on a napkin. It had seemed like a party trick.

Now, it’s an inescapable reality, pounding at his skull, telling him his legs are traitors and that the world is nothing but a series of premeditated decisions.

The man at the end of the aisle coughs conspicuously. Soonyoung eyes him with annoyance before turning his attention back to the ingredients on a can of Arizona Sweet Tea. A pastime. Joshua shuffles through cards with statistics on them. They’re waiting for something, though, if pressed, neither of them could tell you what.

If pressed, Jihoon would tell you they were simply doing what the world dictated they do.

Even when feet away from one another, the space between them feels insignificant. Soonyoung feels Joshua’s psyche pressed up close to his. He breathes in personality.

Somewhere in the middle of Lincoln County, Nevada, a life ends. Joshua sends Soonyoung a look from over a stack of baseball cards when he feels it. This one fought. This one zips along Soonyoung’s skin and balances at the ends of his fingers.

He snaps, the fluorescent lights above his head flicker in time to his movements. He longs to make a mess.

“You think that was--” Joshua starts, cuts himself off before he finishes the question. Neither of them want to say it out loud.

“No,” Soonyoung says. “We would know if it was.”

At least, he hopes they would. That’s what they’ve been banking on.

The waiting ends just as suddenly as it began. Joshua walks up to the front of the store to pay for the food Soonyoung had insisted they could go without. The conversation had lasted moments, and as soon as Soonyoung had suggested that they _chill on the food, you know, to save some cash_ , Joshua had slammed on the breaks and taken the next exit off the highway. Which is how they ended up here.

Middle of nowhere, Kentucky. Jihoon would be positively tickled at the prospect.

 _You know,_ he might have said, one of Joshua’s lollipops perched between his teeth, _there are always things to be done at places like these._

Soonyoung really wants to make a mess.

Seems like he’s not the only one, though. At the end of the aisle, there’s a short but obvious movement, someone begging not to be seen. Soonyoung sees many things he is not supposed to.

The coughing man has his hands in his pockets.

There is nothing special about the way he looks in the concave mirror at the end of the aisle, other than that his jaw is clenched and the crease between his eyebrows slices down the middle of his face and leaves a canyon in its wake. He is all potential energy, seconds away from movement.

Soonyoung stops a robbery before it starts by snapping his fingers and sending the boy sprawling on his back. The knife ends up beneath one of Soonyoung’s feet.

His hands still crackle with static. He sighs.  

“God.” And that’s Joshua’s voice behind him, exhausted, closer to defeat than he was earlier. “I told you to stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Soonyoung bends to pick the knife up. He tries to balance it upon one finger and fails miserably. Things just don’t work the same way when they aren’t three.

“Being yourself.” The eye roll is evident in his voice.

Lights flicker again. Joshua breathes out his nose, then sucks in a breath through his teeth.

Clearly, he’s a bit fed up with the whole situation. There are things to learn about Joshua, many of them pertaining to his soft edges. Many of them pertaining to the itch just beneath his skin, his veins. He taps his foot slow and steady on the tile floor, a sure sign his mind is already driving down the 64.

“Oh, fuck off.” The chip on Soonyoung’s shoulder shifts every time he breathes out.

The best part about him is that his chest is full of flowers and butane and yet somehow he stops himself from bursting aflame.

 

 

_Taken from the Hanover Times:_

_Local boy saves cat, starts crying and never stops_

 

 

ii.

 

 

“Don’t be a baby,” Jihoon chastises as he pulls on a surgical glove with his teeth. “You’ve been through worse.”

Soonyoung tastes gunpowder and acetaminophen at the back of his throat. The ceiling offers no clues as to his whereabouts, but he feels Joshua pressing in at the periphery of his consciousness and lets the tension flow out of his muscles.

This is much more like home.

It doesn’t matter where they are, there is a comfort in Soonyoung being laid out on a table that’s been cleared of its contents while Jihoon fuses over stitches, while they both bask in Joshua’s calming presence.

This time, the bullet is in his foot.

He almost doesn’t mind the pain anymore, not when it brings them together like this. Jihoon squints down at a pair of pliers. He’s not a doctor, but he’s done this too many times for the anxiety to make his hands shake like it did when they were still new to pulling bullets out of flesh. He dips the pliers in something clear, probably rubbing alcohol by the smell of it.

Their sterilization methods could use some work.

The room smells like iron. Joshua brings a hand to Soonyoung’s forehead and traces letters into his skin. “You need something to bite down on?” he asks, probably feeling the absence of anything rushed or panicked on the inside of Soonyoung’s skull.

“Let me bite you.” Soonyoung smiles shakily and brings one of his hands up to cover Joshua’s, to bring his hand down to his mouth and press his lips to the back of it.

Static crackles along his skin, up Joshua’s arm, straight to his heart. Jihoon takes a moment to roll his eyes.

Joshua pulls his hand away like he’s been burned. “You’re kind of the worst.”

But his cheeks are red and his mind withdrawals from Soonyoung’s in a way that means he’s hiding something.

The pleased smile never leaves Soonyoung’s face, even as Jihoon pinches his calf.

He can tell what Jihoon’s thinking even without looking at him. _Things have to happen this way, even if it hurts._

Lots of things hurt, and not always in the ways Soonyoung is used to. Years ago, he thought he was a vigilante. Now he knows he’s waging an unwinnable war against the night, one has was meant to be locked in forever. That’s painful, that’s part of the realization that his _something more_ involves dying, one day.

Things are so much easier when you think yourself invincible. At least, with Jihoon here, with Joshua’s hand on his shoulder, with all the neural pathways in his head leading to a deep ache in his chest, he knows he doesn’t die alone.

“What’s my prognosis, doc?” Soonyoung sighs out.

The throbbing is all that’s left of the pain, now. A slow pulse, a vague reminder that blood pumps through his veins and outside his body onto Jihoon’s hands as he readies the pliers and presses cotton balls to the wound.

The makeshift hospital lives in Soonyoung’s head in infinite versions. Different tables, different cities, same people, same feelings.

“You don’t die today,” Jihoon says. “It’s not a bullet that does it.”

“Excellent,” Soonyoung says.

“Make sure it hurts,” Joshua whispers and that’s the last thing Soonyoung remembers hearing before he passes out.

 

 

ii.

  
  


 

It’s cold in Soonyoung’s room. So, he can’t sleep. So, he spends an hour playing with lego bricks in the living room.

Taking things apart is easier than putting them together.   


He doesn’t mean to wake Joshua and Jihoon, but he does, but they both shuffle into the room separately anyway. “How are those stitches holding up?” Jihoon asks. His eyelids are drooping with sleep, the edges of unconsciousness still nipping at his heels. “Think I’m getting better?”

Joshua has a hand in Jihoon’s pocket and Soonyoung doesn’t know what that means.

He does know he wants hands in his pockets, in his hair, in between his ribs. Their hands are already firm on his heart, he likes to pretend the pressure means something.

“As always,” Soonyoung says, two fingers on a lego boat of his own creation, “better than nothing.”

It’s not cold in the house, Soonyoung just can’t sleep. So, he makes enough noise to wake Joshua and Jihoon. So, he asks them to help without ever saying anything.

“Work in the morning?” Soonyoung asks. Joshua just nods and holds a hand out for him to take.

Joshua’s hands are rough from playing guitar for years, from dreaming and then not. Jihoon’s are soft. Life would be easier if everything meant something.

Life is hard. Calluses only indicate use. Soonyoung is covered in signs of wear and tear.

When Jihoon kisses him for the first time, Soonyoung tastes blood, even when he knows neither of them are bleeding.

“I think I have something to tell you,” Soonyoung says, swallows, feels.

_ I’m in love with both of you,  _ he thinks.  _ I’m sorry. _

Joshua must know, has only let Soonyoung stay quiet this long for his own sake.

Jihoon presses his lips to Soonyoung’s forehead, keeps them there even when static electricity makes his hair stand on end.

There’s a bottle on the wall and inside it, Soonyoung sails a ship going nowhere.

“No,” Joshua says. “No, you don’t.”   


 

 

i.

 

 

Jihoon drinks blood in the evenings. That’s the rumor at least.

He lives down the street, some number followed by Virginia Creeper Lane and he keeps his curtains drawn and door locked. There are more rumors, some worse than others. He’s a ghost, he’s a squatter, he’s the son to a rich politician who thought him more trouble than he was worth. Soonyoung believes half of what he’s heard.

Specifically, he believes the half about the people who come from far and wide to learn the time and place of their deaths.

This is before they’ve met, months before Soonyoung walks into Jihoon’s house one day and finds him gone, finds his house in manufactured disarray, finds out where he’s been taken. This is the beginning, or, well, one of them.

Soonyoung gets in knife fights in the evenings. That one’s not a rumor.

He doesn’t always come out unscathed, but he’s never been too worried about it. Something has always told him he was meant for more than dying in an alleyway filled with more despair than oxygen.

“If you get yourself killed, I won’t come to your funeral,” Seungkwan says, and he’s joking, of course he’s joking, but there’s still genuine concern somewhere in there.

He doesn’t think he’ll die in this city, or the next. He was meant for something spectacular.

“Won’t have one,” Soonyoung responds and Seungkwan squawks indignantly.

“You’d better!” he hisses. He’s carrying too many groceries at once, but he won’t let Soonyoung help with any of them. He will drop his milk when he reaches the front door, but that’s not Soonyoung’s fault. “Otherwise I won’t be able to make a point.”

When Seungkwan does drop a gallon of milk on their front door step, Soonyoung pulls reams of paper towels from the cupboards and wipes Seungkwan’s tears away, even as he can feel the milk seeping into his jeans.

“Please, just…” Seungkwan hiccups and Soonyoung knows he’s not crying over the milk, feels infinitely guilty for causing this pain. “Be careful, promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, but even as the words leave his mouth he knows he is a fool for them. “I don’t die here.”

Those invincible thoughts flow less easily when he’s lying on his back in the middle of the street, a switchblade embedded in his abdomen. For some reason, the only thing racing back and forth across the inside of his skull is that Seungkwan would be so fucking disappointed to know he died just like he said he wouldn’t.

Static travels along the tips of his fingers before it peters out. It wants to make a mess, to explode, to shock, to seek revenge. But the guy’s already gone. Didn’t have the stomach to watch a man die at his feet.

Soonyoung doesn’t blame him.

He thinks he may have a collapsed lung. The world provides him with heaps of air and yet he cannot ever quite get enough of it.

A car pulls up and Soonyoung is so very aware that this might be it, that he had been wrong all along, that he dies here, in this city, on this road, surrounded by blood that never felt like it was his.

A man’s head comes into view in the night sky, between the moon and the rest of it. “Hello,” it says, and Soonyoung knows those eyes, has seen them peeking out of curtains down the road. “You look like shit.”

This is one beginning of many. Soonyoung coughs and swallows blood. Jihoon pulls Joshua out of his car and has him carry Soonyoung to the back.

“You don’t die here,” Jihoon says, glancing at him from the driver’s seat. “It’s not a knife that does it.”

 

 

iii.

 

 

“The first time I met you, I thought you were going to kill me,” Soonyoung says, his feet up on the dashboard. While Joshua isn’t the biggest fan of that fact, he tolerates it because he knows that now is not the time for pointless bickering.

Soonyoung's aura feels… not fragile, but close it it. Like there are cracks beneath his skin that have just not made themselves visible yet.

Joshua knows he must not feel much different, because he can feel the fraying edges of his mind on the back of his neck every time he turns his head too fast. They’re both running on empty. “Was it because I looked cool?” Joshua jokes. They need this, they need something to fill the space between them.

It’s not that Joshua isn’t content to love like this, like they’re never getting enough air, it’s that there’s a piece of both of them missing and maybe Soonyoung doesn’t feel it, but Joshua has to. He was born to.

“No. You wore a lot of black.” Soonyoung scratches at the window.

Two years ago, this trip would not have been possible. Two years ago Joshua was frustrated with Soonyoung for reasons more related to his self destructive tendencies than his personality. The tendencies have not left him, Joshua just understands more about the molten grief that pumps through his veins.

Back then, rage was indistinguishable from desperate longing. It look a while for him to get his emotions untangled.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Soonyoung speaks up again. “If it had to be anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”

He says these things as if he does not curl up in Joshua’s bed when he has nightmares. As if he has not whispered his love to the sky, the sea, the void. Joshua lets him pretend it could be anyone else.

Because if Jihoon could know he was going to be taken away and say nothing about it, maybe everything else was a lie, too.

Joshua misses, all at once, waking up to the two of them still fast asleep. Jihoon and the furrow in his brows that never seemed to come undone. Soonyoung and his wicked smile that, even in sleep, made his features sharp and magical. They felt so contained in their stasis. Waking them was always a second thought, Joshua was much more concerned with letting them rest a little while longer.

Like maybe the sleep would take the responsibilities from their mind, like sleep would let Joshua spend one day not worrying himself to death.

Even when Jihoon told them that Soonyoung was not meant to die in Virginia, Joshua could never quite believe him.

Four years ago, Joshua was supposed to die. He’s had a hard time believing fortune tellers since. Speaking to Jihoon about his doubts had seemed rude, back when he was so sure they had more time.

It doesn’t seem to bother Soonyoung that he could die at any moment, now that they’re miles from home. He’s still himself, just a version without Jihoon. Not a version Joshua’s very familiar with.

He turns, soaks in Soonyoung’s face, his skin, the enamel on his teeth, the scars up and down his arms.

He is beautiful in a way that makes Joshua feel like he might fall apart. His smiles used to make Joshua weak in the knees. Used to, used to.

 _I’m glad it’s you, too,_ Joshua thinks. Knowing full well Soonyoung can’t read minds, knowing full well he’ll never say it out loud.

Jihoon’s got to come back. Joshua feels the muscles in his face rotting away.

Looking inward hurts too much for him to bare for very long, so he extends himself outward, toward the edges of Soonyoung’s existence. It feels bleak.

 _My mood is walking a tightrope,_ Soonyoung’s dendrites whisper desperately. _I am dangerously close to falling._

“We’ve got this handled.” Joshua grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles go white, they’re headed down the 64 as fast as he dares to go.

A moment where all Soonyoung does is blink.

“I know,” he says finally. He pries one of Joshua’s hands off the wheel and holds it in his.

The car smells like antiseptic and the wound on Soonyoung’s knee is still fresh.

 _I love you,_ Joshua thinks. Somehow that’s the worst of it.

 

 

_Taken from the Hanover Times:_

_Local boy claims to have seen God, says he’s short_

 

 

ii.

 

 

Jihoon stitches Soonyoung up eight times during the summer of the year they met.

Joshua feels Jihoon tear himself to pieces every night and never says anything about it. Soonyoung’s covered in bandages that make him look like a toddler.

“You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself,” Joshua says one night, after Jihoon’s done taking apart Soonyoung’s skeleton and rearranging the pieces. “You can’t help everyone. Jihoon knows you can’t. 

Soonyoung says nothing because Soonyoung is not there. Not fully, not in any way that matters.

He’d been close, this time. He’d kissed Joshua while Jihoon took scissors to his arm. He’d bitten Joshua’s lip to keep from yelling and really, Joshua couldn’t find it in himself to be mad.

It hadn’t been his first kiss. It had been his first with Soonyoung. Not the way he thought it would happen.

He’d thought about it a lot.

Jihoon shifts in his chair, has something to say but doesn’t want to say it aloud.

 _You’re not going to get through to him,_ Jihoon thinks. His gloves are covered in blood that’s not his. It’s never his. _He’s not going to learn unless there are real consequences. He doesn’t care about himself, but they’ll find something he does care about and take it away from him. That’s how it happens._

Joshua does not ask what _it_ is. He knows, or, he should know. He does not want to think it into existence.

_Ignoring it won’t make it not happen._

Jihoon thinks these things a lot. He is painfully familiar with the predictability of life.

“Are you always right?” Joshua asks. He turns a dainty hourglass over between his fingers and watches the grains of sand dance through the air. It’s not from any place close to where they are now. Joshua longs to fly to where none of this matters. “Does it always happen like you say it does?”

Jihoon opens his mouth finally, only to close it moments later. There’s a secret hidden in there somewhere behind muscles and sinew. Joshua wishes he would just spit it out.

“I’ve only been wrong once,” he says. His eyes are miles away, but his hand rests at the base of Joshua’s neck, rubbing slow circles into his skin. Jihoon’s always felt warm, even when he’s saying things Joshua doesn’t want to hear.

Joshua wonders what he was wrong about, if it’s what he thinks it is.

Joshua met Jihoon on the brink of death. Soonyoung had done the same. The connection makes Joshua’s skin crawl.

Among all the haze and fog that clouds his memory of that night, Joshua thinks he remembers Jihoon’s voice telling him _I know you’re supposed to die. I’d like to help you anyway._

So, Jihoon’s always had a thing for lost causes.

Years later, Joshua’s still enamored with the look Jihoon gets in his eyes when he’s faced with a challenge. Soonyoung was a challenge. Joshua had been a challenge, at one point. They’re all barrelling toward each other at light speed and the implication is that when they collide, they burn.

The whole house smells like lighter fluid.

“You think it could happen again?” Joshua asks, and it’s not a question he expects a real answer to, but he asks it anyway.

Hope is so, so dangerous.

Jihoon purses his lips, waits a moment, then smiles like he’s figured something out. “Maybe. I think you’re not supposed to know the answer to that question.”

Hope, then. It’s all he’s got.

 

 

i.

 

 

It’s easy to hate Kwon Soonyoung if you think about him for too long. He’s filled with far too much energy, and Joshua feels far too much.

Joshua thinks about him a lot.

They’re in Jihoon’s living room, a dusty thing filled with jars of sand and so many books it makes Joshua dizzy if he tries to make out the titles on them for more than a few seconds.

The rumor is Jihoon tells you your fate if you give him something in return. Most of the items furnishing the house do not match. It is not hard to put the pieces together.

“Did he ever tell you how you were supposed to die?” Soonyoung asks. He’s paging through a book on Thomas Edison, looking like someone’s holding a gun to his head.

The question is not a welcome one.

It really means, _does Jihoon even know? How can you trust someone who reveals so little?_

It’s not about the amount of information, but the importance of the words spoken. Jihoon never lies. Jihoon says what needs to be said, hardly more.

Soonyoung doesn’t understand what Joshua is. Although, to be fair, Joshua doesn’t understand much about Soonyoung either. He gets himself hurt. He throws himself at the same wall repeatedly. He worries Jihoon. He worries some small part of Joshua he likes to pretend doesn’t exist.

There are nights Jihoon doesn’t sleep, just traces letters and numbers into Joshua’s back, tries to puzzle out what it all means. What it means for the three of them to live under one roof. What it means to be aware of the day someone you love dies.

Sometimes, Soonyoung tries to tell them he’s been out bowling, even when he’s covered in blood.

Joshua feels everything at once and Soonyoung does not understand the merits of honesty.

Death is a distant thought in the back of his mind, looming but never overwhelming. Joshua's never asked Jihoon about his expiration date. 

“I don’t care to know,” Joshua says finally.

He lost interest in the book he’s reading an hour ago. The words all blur together with Soonyoung’s thoughts if Joshua isn’t careful.

 _His sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family obstacles (_ Which piece of me is the most broken? _) which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were (_ What part of me is it that Joshua hates the most? _) dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence (_ How do I stop myself from feeling like this? _) he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit._

The truth is that Joshua does not hate any part of Soonyoung. He wishes he did.

Jihoon falls into his lap and laughs like the sun.

 

 

iii.

 

 

Days begin to blur together fairly quickly.

Joshua was supposed to die years ago. Soonyoung was not meant to live this long. Life finds ways to fuck them all over when they least expect it.

Time runs circles around the room. Jihoon remembers that’s all it was meant for.

Today, it’s the pentecost, or it’s passover, or it’s the day Jihoon finally realizes he’s capable of more on his own than he ever believed possible.

Somewhere in the middle of Lincoln County, Nevada, Jihoon sits at a pew and prays to a god he does not think exists.

_If they do die, let it be with me._

His head feels too heavy for his neck.

He’s missing a whole chunk of time. He remembers sitting in the living room, surrounded by boats in bottles he’s not sure were even real and then… Past seeps into present. One second he was waiting, the next he was here.

God, he remembers throwing a chair at a wall.

He’s not even quite sure where _here_ is. He’d never bothered to check the location when he saw it happen to him the first time. When he dreamed it, when he figured out when he was going to forget next. 

He knows where Joshua and Soonyoung are, so he doesn’t move. They’re close, they’re headed straight for him. He checks a watch on his wrist. 30 minutes. Or, maybe 30 seconds, depending on how things go, on how desperately he wants them here. Time moves forward at a snails crawl.

“Here?” Soonyoung’s voice comes from the back. Joshua’s not trailing far behind.

Jihoon reaches out and feels nothing but empty space on all sides.

“Here.” Joshua says, finally, his hand finding Jihoon’s shoulder. He melts.

Jihoon isn’t so sure anymore that he’s psychic as much as he is that he’s privy to secrets that were meant to tear him apart from the inside.

And then they’re three again.

Joshua stands by the end of a pew, Soonyoung is hopping over them recklessly. They move in ways well suited to them. Jihoon imagines what it would be like to go this alone, to wake up in Nevada without a home. To trudge along with the world on his back, to fall and hit only concrete. 

Guilt consumes. 

“How’d you get out?” Soonyoung has tears in his eyes but Jihoon doesn’t comment on them.

His heart beats like a drum, grows larger now that he’s safe. Now that they’re where he can see them.

“Does it matter?” Jihoon asks.

Forcing a smile isn’t as hard as it might have been years ago. But he’s well practiced in the art of flashing gums and telling everyone that things are alright.

He misses his mother. Soonyoung drags a thumb up the side of his arm, tentative, before Jihoon nods and lets himself be hugged. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”

 _Me too,_ Jihoon thinks, knows Joshua has more pressing matters to attend to. _But about you_.

“C’mon.” Soonyoung holds out his hand and he’s smiling like he does not think Jihoon is capable of telling a lie. “Let’s get out of here.”

How Jihoon aches to be back home.

 

 

ii.

 

 

Soonyoung’s hands are cold on his ribs. Joshua’s got teeth and fingernails and eyelashes and Jihoon thinks he might die.

“You’re being silly,” Joshua says, laughter in the back of his throat. “His hands aren’t that cold.”

Except they are. Jihoon wrinkles his nose in distaste, still can’t help but smile when Soonyoung wriggles his fingers up and down his sides. He feels so at home here it hurts.

He could not have had this if he had not made the decisions he did.

“You’re the worst,” he mutters at both of them. Because they are. And he is. And they’re terrible together.

Fate laughs at them. Death circles like a vulture. The other shoe has to drop some day.

 

 

_Taken from the Hanover Times:_

_Local boy cries wolf, no one cares enough to save him_

 

 

ii.

 

 

Jihoon does not know when Joshua is going to die. This terrifies him.

Jihoon does not know when Soonyoung is supposed to die. This makes him feel sick.

Death doesn’t give these things up easily, he wants your time, he wants your knowledge, he wants to take until the only things left to you are your fingers and your eyes. You can see, you can feel, but you cannot remember.

Sometimes, he wakes up in another state. He has given something up he will never get back.

Jihoon’s made three deals with death in his lifetime. The first had been accidental. The second two were on purpose.

Joshua was shot in the abdomen. Jihoon watched it happen. Had known the beginning and the end of it.

The rest is history, or, should be.

Falling in love with Joshua was easy. It shouldn’t have been.  

It’s like the night sky in a city. It’s knowing the stars are there but not being able to see them.

 _They die, but I don’t know when_. That’s the hardest part. He should have just cut and run, saved himself the grief.

Some nights he stares at the front door until it burns itself into his retinas. He could leave, easily, if his body was not sewn into theirs.

“Soonyoung doesn’t die in Virginia,” Jihoon says one night. Joshua has his head half out a window when he says it so he has to repeat himself, but it’s probably for the best. He hadn’t sounded certain the first time.

The second time, he says it with conviction, like he’d be willing to bet his life on it. He’s gotten very good at lying.

Joshua often worries himself sick, throws up outside in the bushes where Soonyoung can’t see him, and pretends like everything is alright. It’s not. Jihoon thinks this lie can alleviate some of that pain.

He forgets the rest of the evening. He thinks he might hold Joshua until the shaking stops. He can’t ask because then Joshua will know.

Stitches have become Jihoon’s specialty. He stitches up Soonyoung’s legs, his hands, his heart, Joshua’s cheeks, his soul. Tonight, Soonyoung’s forearm is cut open. His hands are covered in paint and blood.

“I’ll be alright,” Soonyoung says groggily, blood loss spinning his head around in circles. “Just, I have to, sleep.”

“You can’t,” Joshua says sternly. “Don’t close your eyes.”

“I have to blink, don’t I?” Soonyoung pouts and Jihoon would laugh if he weren’t desperately trying to stop the bleeding.

Later, it’s worse.

“You don’t die here,” Jihoon says and Soonyoung’s crying, Soonyoung’s in pain, Soonyoung will keep doing this to himself and it’s Jihoon’s fault. It’s his fault.

The lie is like lead in his veins.

Some nights are better than others. Soonyoung comes home with a small cut on his forehead and Jihoon stitches it up while Joshua reads them poetry out loud. When he’s done he admires his handiwork, kisses Soonyoung’s cheek and knows that this happiness is the reason he does these things.

This would not have been possible without sacrifice. It’s about knowing that it’s all worth it, in the end.

“Look,” he says to Soonyoung one he’s done putting him back together. Joshua is leaning his head on the chair, looking the happiest Jihoon thinks he’s ever seen him, “You’re whole again.”

 

 

?.

 

 

Jihoon is fourteen when he predicts the date of his mother’s death.

He’s eighteen when he decides that he will not let the void take her until she’s had the time she deserves.

Three months out, he tells her. She had not wanted to know, but the words slip out anyway. Some desperate attempt to change the future, perhaps.

So, she lives. It’s great, it’s different, Jihoon starts thinking she might live forever. 

Then, he starts to forget. He can remember knowing something was going to take him before it happened, and then black, and then consciousness. In a different place, a different town, a new state. Jihoon doesn’t know it when he is young, but he is giving time for the time he has taken.

He sees himself on the news one day, standing still in front of an office building for hours. He feels sick. This is before he has anyone to talk to.

Then, his mother dies. And Jihoon hadn’t seen it coming.

This is the real beginning.

Years later, Jihoon watches Joshua bleed out on the street and decides to give up more of himself if it means a second chance for someone else.

Then, Soonyoung. Then, he’s whole again.

 

 

_Taken from the Hanover Times:_

_Local boy sends soul to the moon, doesn’t come back down_

 

 

iii.

 

 

“Were you scared?” Soonyoung asks, hands threaded through Jihoon’s hair, brushing out the knots.

He means _did you think you might die?_

“No,” Jihoon says truthfully. “I knew you were coming.”

Joshua hits him on the shoulder. He’s holding one of the bottle ships in his hands. They weren’t a dream, then. The mess he made before he left stands as a reminder of the lies he’s told. They think he was taken, which is half true. More true than usual.

“Don’t ever worry us like that ever again.” Soonyoung kisses his way up Jihoon’s jaw and he’s joking, but Jihoon thinks _you worry me every day_.

And he could have left years ago and saved himself the trouble. He’s pieced together a family, and untangling those threads sounds something like dying.

“I think I have something to tell you,” Jihoon says.

Joshua watches Soonyoung and him while they sleep. Soonyoung enjoys so thoroughly having two people to fall back on. Jihoon has been holding secrets in his heart that are pushing them apart.

Joshua and Soonyoung had it made, once. They would probably want to know what it feels like to live like this, like the stitches holding this wound together are always moments away from snapping.

“No,” Joshua says and he’s piloting a ship in a bottle while Soonyoung taps on the glass. “No, you don’t.”

 

 

_Taken from the Hanover Times:_

_Local boy loves_

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading even tho i am SO sure this is the worst thing ive ever written
> 
> thanks @ the mods for putting this bb together!!! and for dealin w me switching up my fic pretty late in. yall are awesome


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